Exercise 6: Adding a new event type

Let us continue building on this example. Let us say that you want to add a hook to the logger demo, enabling other third party applications to receive a notification whenever the logger settings are changed. We need a new event type for this. Let us create a new event called loggerdemo-update:

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/events/loggerdemo-update

The idea is that we will arrange for our user interface function to signal this new event whenever the settings are changed, instead of directly expanding the /etc/crontab file. Edit the /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/esmith/FormMagick/Panels/loggerdemo.pm file and replace the line:

unless (system ("/sbin/e-smith/expand-template", "/etc/crontab") == 0)

with the line:

unless (system ("/sbin/e-smith/signal-event", "loggerdemo-update") == 0)

Now the loggerdemo user interface signals the new event whenever it saves the new settings to the configuration database. Next, we have to make sure that the event does what we need it to do - rebuild the /etc/crontab file.

cd /etc/e-smith/events/loggerdemo-update
mkdir -p templates2expand/etc
touch templates2expand/etc/crontab

Now the example should work just as before. You can edit the loggerdemo settings in the web manager, and see that the /etc/crontab file changes. But now other applications can also receive notifications of the loggerdemo-update event, by creating symbolic links from the /etc/e-smith/events/loggerdemo-update directory.